


Another set of rules apply

by towardsmorning



Series: Perspectives [4]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, Gen, Microfic, Outsider's Perspective
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-09
Updated: 2012-06-09
Packaged: 2017-11-07 10:00:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 883
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/429770
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/towardsmorning/pseuds/towardsmorning
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sherlock Holmes has always surrounded herself with good judges of character, even if she'd never admit it.</p><p>(Three outsider's perspectives on Sherlock.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Another set of rules apply

**Author's Note:**

> This is done to make sure I don't forget that this series is, you know, unfinished. I'm working on an s2 sequel and debating whether to do an inevitably-AU 'and beyond' addendum. Ho hum, we'll see.
> 
> This fic is dedicated to [Kelcie](http://arestlesswind.tumblr.com/) for always enabling me when it comes to this series.
> 
> Anyway, I have thoughts on this fic but I'll leave them for the end.

1\. Mycroft

There is an entire box in the neat confines of Mycroft's brain that is dedicated to the collection of information about his sister. Not a literal box- he tends more towards metaphor than Sherlock does with memory techniques, has never been visual in the way she is- but definitely a category that he constantly pokes at, prods at, adds to and subtracts from as necessary. Most people think of her as a static person. He knows better. She has always chafed at the implication and presumed truth of his intellectual superiority, but her ability to catch him off-guard is unrivalled and she knows it.

Perhaps it was growing up with her which did it. Mycroft remembers Sherlock crying as a small child, remembers her pushing the crying aside and learning to set her mouth instead, remembers her first talking back to their parents and then refusing to talk to them at all; a shift from an instinctive, frustrated incomprehension of the world to a calculated, icy one. _It's easier,_ she'd confided in him when she was twelve. _You don't understand,_ she'd said to him at fourteen, _it's different for you_. He comprehends the point she is making intellectually, but even all these years later doesn't really seem to truly understand it any better. She doesn't want to be his _sister,_ doesn't want all those connotations about caretaking and protection, and Mycroft doesn't know how to tell her that god knows he could never make them stick anyway so there's no need to fret.

So he keeps adding to the box, and he keeps deleting her arrest record, he talks to Joan and makes her stay in for the night when Sherlock is dangerously close to relapse. He weathers her anger and frustration and coldness and waits for insight to strike. She keeps using 'brother' as an insult in the meantime; he wonders if that's calculated or instinctive.

2\. Molly

Everybody works under the assumption that Molly doesn't know what Sherlock's like. It's a false assumption. She knows that her crush (not that it's _really_ a crush, Molly tells herself, it's just one of those girl crush things, everyone has those-) is misguided, and desperate, and never going anywhere. She'd known that from maybe a week after she met Sherlock. No matter what anyone thinks, Molly isn't deluded.

She knows that Sherlock is cold. She knows it's not an act, or that if it is then she's been acting so long she doesn't know how not to. She knows Sherlock doesn't care about the kind of life Molly has or wants, doesn't care about other people's feelings, doesn't even care about her own. Molly also knows that despite her own denials Sherlock does _have_ them, almost seems to have them more than everyone else sometimes. They're not kind feelings, or warm ones, and it isn't much of a comfort to know, but they are there.

Knowing all this doesn't seem to do anything to deter the part of her brain Molly has long since realised she can't control, but she does _know._ For what it's worth.

3\. Mrs. Hudson

Sherlock is a good girl, really.

Probably not by most people's standards, but Martha has lived long enough to be comfortable in the fact that most people don't know what they're talking about. People ask what it's like to have a lodger like that, tut about how poor Doctor Watson must feel, but for all the bullet holes in the wall (and oh, her heart is never going to recover from that), the body parts in the fridge (she's not squeamish, but really, near the _food_ ) and the late night violin sessions (Sherlock plays lovely music, though, when it isn't four AM) Martha wouldn't ever really want the girl to leave.

Some nights, when she's not in the mood to create a racket and Joan is otherwise occupied, Sherlock comes down for a chat. Normally this isn't much more than Sherlock rambling, ranting, sitting in moody silence or sharing some insight that Martha doesn't understand much of- but she does come down and talk, and she doesn't object much if Martha fusses about how much she's been eating or hasn't, doesn't object if Martha natters on about nothing much in particular to fill any silences.

She's wondered more than once what it is that lets Sherlock think she can do this when with everybody else, even Doctor Watson, she seems incapable. The poor girl doesn't have much in the way of friends, and as long as Martha's known her- longer than people tend to realise- there's never been anybody. Just the brother, and goodness knows that Sherlock doesn't tend to go out of her way for him. She's never seen any mother or father, no grandparents or nieces or cousins. She never seems to go away for Christmas or Easter; before she'd come to live at 221b, Martha had badgered her into coming around more than once, though Sherlock had spent most of the time complaining.

Sherlock had been so good to her when that nasty business with Bill happened. Martha just meant to repay the favour. She's paid it back with plenty of interest over the years, she supposes, but Sherlock is a good girl and Martha hasn't ever been left wanting.

**Author's Note:**

> One thing that, in retrospect, I wish I'd communicated better in the previous fics was that Sherlock is not a reliable narrator when she evaluates herself. She buys into her own hype, pushes her emotions away even more strongly than canon!Sherlock and doesn't even acknowledge that she's doing it. I wanted to get outside her head for a bit; thus, this fic.
> 
> I almost did Lestrade- despite him barely featuring in previous fics, he's actually pretty damn important to my idea of her as a character- but I think it'd be best if I did an entire fic regarding that. Also my Lestrade voice is very, very crap.
> 
> Title from School of Seven Bells by My Cabal, a song which has nothing to do with the fic but which had just that one phrase I needed.


End file.
